Former US president Jimmy Carter dies at 100

Former US president Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100, US media reported. Carter served one term in office as the 39th president of the United States (1977-1981) during a turbulent period both domestically and internationally.

James Earl Carter, Jr. was the first US president to be popularly elected after Watergate forced the resignation of former president Richard Nixon. As the 1976 election season got under way, a US electorate wearied by political scandal and the ceaseless grind of the Vietnam War decided to take a chance on a virtually unknown peanut farmer from Georgia running as a folksy, centrist Democrat who was untainted by insider Washington politics.

But Carter’s one-term presidency was destined to preside over a challenging period both at home and abroad, from the US energy crisis and the runaway inflation of the 1970s to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the start of the Iranian hostage crisis as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late that same year.

Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before earning a Bachelor of Science degree from the US Naval Academy in 1946.